Weather and Traffic

Brisk weekend weather ahead; forecasters talk hurricanes

Hurricane Jeanne closes in on Florida’s East Coast in September 2004. Today is hurricane and flooding awareness day at the National Weather Service. See below for more info. (Credit: NOAA)

If you like cool, crisp weather with a bracing wind for your morning walk, the National Weather Service has whipped up a weekend designed to please.

Saturday morning’s expected low in Palm Beach is 53, but with a stiff north wind it will feel more like 48, forecasters said.

The area won’t see 70 again until Sunday, when winds swing around to the east as a warming trend begins. By Wednesday, the forecast high is 77, which is around normal for early March.

Forecast models are suggesting that a storm system may push yet another cold front through Florida next Wednesday and Thursday — but it’s too early to speculate on what other impacts that system could have on East Coast weather.

For now, Weather Underground is calling for a chance of thunderstorms on Thursday, followed by another cool-down, but not as cool as the upcoming weekend.

AccuWeather isn’t predicting much of a cool-down at all, and in fact is calling for temperatures mostly in the 80s for the second week of March.

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TIMELY WEATHER TIPS: This is Severe Weather Awareness Week, with each day focusing on a different type of weather threat. This year’s event was appropriately timed: Tuesday was marine hazards and rip currents, and it was a day when rip currents hammered Florida’s East Coast.

Wednesday was tornadoes and thunderstorms, and it was a day when severe weather risks abounded throughout the state. Although South Florida escaped the brunt of this storm, two tornadoes touched down in western Florida, an EF-1 in Port Charlotte with winds of 97 mph, and an EF-0 in Murdock — just outside of Port Charlotte — with winds of 65 mph.

Monday’s featured hazard was lightning and Friday’s will be heat, cold and wildfire threats.

That leaves today, which focuses on hurricanes and flooding. With the start of hurricane season 96 days away, and with a cold front driving wind chills in Palm Beach down into the 40s over the weekend, hurricanes are out of sight and out of mind.

Weather experts will tell you to start thinking about contingency plans early.

“Don’t let our recent good luck with hurricanes lull you into a false sense of complacency,” the National Weather Service office in Miami said in a Facebook post today. “History tells us that South Florida is at the top of the list of most hurricane-prone areas in the country.”